I would like to express my gratitude for a healing of grief and loss. Ten years ago, I lost a child unexpectedly to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), and I wasn’t sure how I was going to go on without him. I felt beset by fear and discouragement. Then, during a moment of stillness and serenity, I felt my oneness with God, Spirit, the creator of the universe, and suddenly, everything changed.
It was a warm, sunny day, and I was on a paddleboard in the middle of a lake, wondering how I was going to survive another day, and if this life was truly worth living. My husband and I have a daughter, who was four years old at the time, so I felt as if I had one foot on earth and one foot in heaven and was being yanked back and forth between them. Not wanting to give in to this despairing feeling or give up hope, and wanting to be strong for my family, I got down on my knees to pray. I looked up to the sky and laid it all down on the line, issuing my heart’s desperate plea to God: “Father, where Thine own children are, / I love to be” (Mary Baker Eddy, Poems, p. 13).
This acknowledgment, that all children belong to God, the one perfect Father-Mother, brought a feeling of comfort that I will never forget. My heart filled with hope and a promise that I could move forward with my life, even though I had been battling dark, depressing thoughts. Next, these words by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science from that same beloved poem filled my mind:
O’er waiting harpstrings of the mind
There sweeps a strain,
Low, sad, and sweet, whose measures
bind
The power of pain,
And wake a white-winged angel throng
Of thoughts, illumed
By faith, and breathed in raptured
song,
With love perfumed.
(Poems, p. 12)
I felt the awakening of those white-winged angel thoughts, and it filled me with peace. I got up and started paddling again, singing the hymn out loud. A sweet sense of serenity enveloped me, and God’s love shone all around, covering the lake with a golden glow. Instead of feeling tugged in two opposing directions, I knew that I could confidently yield to Life, God. I felt an irresistible pull toward what I can only describe as the presence of the Christ. The sorrow and insecurity were replaced by a feeling of safety, security, and even joy.
Although I had been raised in Christian Science and had joined The Mother Church at a young age, this experience inspired me to deepen my understanding of Christian Science. It gave me a renewed sense of Life and opened the door of my thought to the possibility that the eternal life promised by Christ Jesus (see I John 2:25) could actually be a present reality—not just theoretically, but one that I could participate in right here and now. That was worth living for! I yearned to discover it for myself.
In her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, Mrs. Eddy describes a similar experience. Alluding to Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins (see Matthew 25:1–13), she says: “Thus it was when the moment arrived of the heart’s bridal to more spiritual existence. When the door opened, I was waiting and watching; and, lo, the bridegroom came! The character of the Christ was illuminated by the midnight torches of Spirit. My heart knew its Redeemer” (p. 23).
Instead of attending a grief support group or calling a counselor, I reached out to a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support. Moments after being in touch with the practitioner, who is also a teacher of Christian Science, I again felt totally enveloped in God’s tender love and care for me and my family.
A few weeks later, I felt led to apply for Primary class instruction in Christian Science with this teacher, which has been one of the greatest blessings God has bestowed upon me. The tender lesson that “Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 264), is a refuge and a comfort.
After studying quietly on my own for a few months, I realized it was time to go back to church. My family and I had been attending a local branch Church of Christ, Scientist, but after my loved one passed away, sleeping in on Sunday mornings had seemed more appealing. The sweet welcome home that we received when we walked back through the doors of that church was another proof of God’s tender love and care, and further proof to me that Christian Science reveals “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
After completing class instruction, I really wanted to help others suffering with grief or depression by sharing Christian Science. I joined that branch church, and I love to pray for ways that I can reach out to other seekers of Truth.
I still think about my son often, but I have learned to look for the spiritual qualities he expressed, such as laughter, joy, and wonder. I know that nothing can “separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). The hole that my son’s passing seemed to have left is now filled with a new understanding of the ever-presence of God’s love for all of His children.
My gratitude for Christian Science and its powerful, healing truth, its illumination of purely spiritual life, and its continuous unfoldment of the understanding of God, good, to all mankind, is immeasurable. “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” (II Corinthians 9:15).
Lindsey Roder
Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, US
